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Self-confidence is a funny
thing.A lot of times, it doesn’t start
within ourselves at all. We gain so much from paying attention to the world around us and putting ourselves in position to learn from others. It is at this point when our abilities and self-perception drastically improve!

I work with a
wheelchair sports and independence program here in Nashville.Kids in chairs participate in a variety of
activities through the program in order to learn how to become more
independent and, in the process, they get the opportunity to play sports that
they may never before tried.

During a wheelchair basketball tournament this season, I was talking
with one of the moms whose 12-year-old daughter is turning into quite an athlete.She’s only been on our team for
a few years, but it’s clear that she has a future in the sport.Although I haven’t witnessed it, I’d heard
that her independence skills outside of sports weren’t what they should be for someone so capable
on a basketball court.Her mom told me
that, for years, her daughter always said she didn’t think that she
could ever move away from home.She
lacked confidence in her abilities.Her
parents tried to convince her otherwise, but it never sunk in; that is, until she started
playing basketball.

The family lives in a small
town, and there aren’t many other kids with disabilities around. Through
basketball, however, she’s traveled to other states where she has met hundreds of
other kids with disabilities.Recently, after seeing many older kids in the league be successful in basketball and go on to play in college, she told her mom that it was her goal to get a basketball
scholarship.Her mom
wanted to make sure that she knew that achieving her goal would mean having to
move away, and she said that she knew and was willing to put in the effort to
become more independent.Having friends
with disabilities became a turning point in her life, and she’s now looking to
the future!

It always brings me joy to see
people believe in themselves for the first time. This girl always had the ability to achieve
independence, but it wasn’t until she believed that she could that she was
motivated to actually work towards it. At the same time, she didn’t believe in herself until
she saw others, who were just like her, thriving in ways she'd only imagined.

There are certainly those who blaze their own
path, and people with disabilities tend to be creative problem-solvers, but
it’s rare that someone can achieve prolonged success throughout life without at
least having some sort of a notion of how someone else achieved success in his
or her own life. Able-bodied people have
a relatively easy time finding someone else to model a path to success after
because there are so many people around to look towards. They really don’t even have to think about
it. People with disabilities, on the
other hand, have a much more difficult time. Many people with disabilities don’t have dozens of other people with
disabilities in their cities who are on a similar path and who are able to show
them the way. That leaves it up to us
emulating able-bodied people. I’m a firm
believer that people with disabilities can do anything that able-bodied people
can, but often the path that we have to take to the same end result is
different, so we can’t always emulate our able-bodied peers without frustration. For example, we might know that waking up
each day eager to make it to a fulfilling career on time is possible and
something that we long for just like everyone else, but when we realize that
work clothes are hard to get into and reliable accessible transportation is
hard to come by, we’re not so sure what to do, and our goal of the fulfilling
career suddenly seems far away. Having
the advice of someone else with a disability who has been there becomes crucial.

I think that we all have a need to
welcome people with disabilities into our lives because we learn how other
people have been able to lessen that gap between those with and without
disabilities. Being around people with
disabilities teaches us that there are people out there just like us who have
been through the same or greater challenges than us and have gone on to succeed
at a high level. Learning that we can do
something is just as important as learning how to do something. Some people fall into the trap of thinking
that they’re alone in their disability and that they can’t do what everyone
else around them does. Through being
around others with disabilities, we learn that we don’t have to reinvent the
wheel because other people have methods, tactics, and ideas that not only work
for them, but they’ll probably work for us, too.

Even those who don’t feel isolated
can learn a thing or two from others with disabilities. I grew up in Atlanta and now live in
Nashville, and even though the majority of my friends were and are able-bodied,
I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t know someone else with a
disability. My level of independence and
the ease with which I do certain things, getting dressed, for example, is
definitely related to those friendships. From my experiences, I now have resources for questions even when my
friends with disabilities aren’t close by. I have learned different things from the able-bodied people in my life
than those with disabilities, and I’m still learning. I find it rewarding to be able to blend a
solution that I’ve created to a problem with someone else’s way of doing things
that might be just a little bit better. Nearly every time I spend time with someone with a disability, I pick up
something to perfect a skill, and sometimes, I don’t even realize that I don’t
know the easiest way to do something until I see another person with a
disability do it. Other people with
disabilities help teach us how to do things in ways that able-bodied people
can’t because they haven’t been where we are.

So, how do you make the jump forward from not knowing many
people with disabilities? Hopefully you
all gain inspiration from the stories that you read on mobileWOMEN.org and have
reached out to other readers through our "Community" section and active facebook page as well.

Taking these steps is an excellent start. Ultimately, I would argue that there’s
nothing like meeting someone face to face. Seeing someone online is great, but that short article or video doesn’t
give you the opportunity to see what their life as a whole is like, to see that
their challenges are similar to yours, or to interact with them. It’s a limited view that makes us question
whether they really are like us or whether it just seems that way. Meeting someone in person allows you to
experience their life first-hand, to see their challenges, and to know that
they really do overcome them. It’s an
experience, and you get to have a say in what you want to learn.

As I said before, you may have to seek out people with disabilities if you don't know peers in your community. Maybe start by planning a trip
to see a mobileWOMEN friend who you've gotten to know. In my life,
I have found that athletes are great people from which to learn. Athletes are go-getters. Physically, they have built up enough
strength to do all kinds of things, from the day-to-day living to pushing the
limits of the body, but most of them started from little strength and worked
their way up, and they know how to help you do that, too. It can be intimidating to jump into
conversation with an athlete when you know that your skills are not yet
developed, but athletics is a really supportive community that wants to help
others. There are tennis, basketball,
rugby, or other athletic groups or tournaments in most states.

I also learned a lot from the Ms. Wheelchair
America Pageant, a pageant built on advocacy ability. The women there all had drastically different
disabilities and were facing various obstacles based on where they lived, but
I learned from each of them. Most states
have state pageants that feed into Ms. Wheelchair America. Even if one of these kinds of events isn’t
held in your hometown, I would strongly advise making a road trip.

No matter what your level of confidence today, we can all use a boost. Learning from others similar to us always helps and, thanks to technology, there are many ways to find your peers! Take a deep breath, embrace the idea of broadening your horizons, and get ready for new-and-improved you! Just like my 12-year-old friend experienced, you never
know when a new endeavor might result in a surge of confidence to turn your
whole life around.

Columnist Amy Saffell lives in Nashville, TN and works in the music industry. She enjoys spending time with friends, concerts, and volunteering for a local youth wheelchair sports and independence group.

1 comment:

I agree. Self-confidence has something to do with how we look at ourselves. We have to be taught on how to bring out our self-confidence through a series of activities, not by "telling it." After my daughter survived a school fire that damaged her face and shoulders, she never wanted to go out again, even after the wounds have healed. She stumbled on an article about plastic surgery in perth in a magazine and consulted the family doctor without our knowledge. When the doctor called us, we still did not say anything to her. It was when she finally decided to go through the surgery that she told us. Now, she goes out with her friends. Currently, we are working on with her fear of fires. Eventually, self-confidence will come back.